210: Mass made to declare itself
Five buildings that hold their own weight on the surface: a Basel tower turned concrete shelf, a Berlin gallery cut for the park, a Brussels mansion stepped up in fair-faced concrete...
In Basel, Valerio Olgiati pulls the structure of the Baloise tower outside the glass and casts pentagonal columns in pigmented concrete shaped like pitched-roof houses, so the floor plates read as shelves and the building carries its load in plain view. The other four projects this week press in the same direction, making mass do its own talking.
In Berlin, John Pawson cuts full-height oak-edged openings into a sandstone-faced gallery for Bastian, pulling Dahlem park directly into rooms floored in large blued-grey stone. In Brussels, Robbrecht en Daem extend Xavier Hufkens with a cascading stack of fair-faced concrete volumes whose setbacks become zenithal openings, while at Villa Doná in Costabissara the Veneto studio RigonSimonetti hold every historical stratum intact, slotting white concrete and glass infill behind original Tuscan columns. And in Courtepin, Deschenaux Architectes raise two spruce-lined dwellings on board-formed concrete pilotis above a shared courtyard, the larch louvers above keeping the structural logic visible end to end.
From Basel Guide: In Basel, Valerio Olgiati designs the Baloise Insurance Company Office Tower, where pentagonal columns shaped like houses carry horizontal concrete slabs in an exposed shelf structure.
From Berlin Guide: In Berlin‘s Dahlem park, John Pawson completes a private gallery whose sandstone facades and full-height oak-edged openings treat the space for viewing art as a problem equal to the works it holds.
In Brussels, Robbrecht en Daem Architecten extends Xavier Hufkens Gallery by re-opening a mansion they converted in 1992, adding a cascading concrete structure that shares floor levels with the original.
Architecture that treats concrete as an extension of ground rather than an object placed on it. Houses half-buried in dunes, cantilevered over forest, rammed back from the stone of their own ruins, domed over fields. Cultural centres, motorway chapels, tram stops, residences, pavilions — projects where mass, cure time, and formwork texture are the subject, not the by-product of construction.
From Cafes by Design: In Costabissara, Vicenza, RigonSimonetti restores Villa Doná and its barchessa as a layered adaptive reuse, converting the service wing into a café, offices, and event hall while preserving every historical stratum.
In Courtepin, Fribourg, Deschenaux Architectes completes Hameau des Marais, a residential grouping where board-formed concrete pilotis and larch-louvered facades hold dwellings lined in solid spruce.
